Thermophilic degradation of hemicellulose, a critical feedstock in the production of bioenergy and other value-added products.

Thermophilic degradation of hemicellulose, a critical feedstock in the production of bioenergy and other value-added products. Appl Environ Microbiol. 2020 Jan 24;: Authors: Cann I, Pereira GV, Abdel-Hamid AM, Kim H, Wefers D, Kayang BB, Kanai T, Sato T, Bernardi RC, Atomi H, Mackie RI Abstract Renewable fuels have gained importance as the world moves towards diversifying its energy portfolio. A critical step in the biomass to bioenergy initiative is deconstruction of plant cell wall polysaccharides to their unit sugars for subsequent fermentation to fuels. To acquire carbon and energy for their metabolic processes, diverse microorganisms have evolved genes encoding enzymes that depolymerize polysaccharides to their carbon/energy-rich building blocks. The microbial enzymes mostly target the energy present in cellulose, hemicellulose and pectin, three major forms of energy storage in plants. In the effort to develop bioenergy as an alternative to fossil fuel, a common strategy is to harness microbial enzymes to hydrolyze cellulose to glucose for fermentation to fuels. However, the conversion of plant biomass to renewable fuels will require both cellulose and hemicellulose, the two largest components of the plant cell wall, as feedstock to improve economic feasibility. Here, we explore the enzymes and strategies evolved by two well-studied bacteria to depolymerize the hemicelluloses xylan/arabinoxylan and mannan. The sets of enzymes, i...
Source: Applied and Environmental Microbiology - Category: Microbiology Authors: Tags: Appl Environ Microbiol Source Type: research